June Newsletter 2013

Wow, as you can imagine, I’ve had quite a month. My honeymoon was fantastic, however, since returning to the office I feel like I have never been away. In fact I feel like I have pinched someone’s lovely memories as they can’t be mine!!

I also am struggling to believe its June already, the first half of the year gone, still waiting for summer to turn up and Christmas will be here before we know it.

While I was away I sky+ a programme that was on the History channel called “The Men Who Built America” and last Sunday I watch a few episodes. They covered the rise of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller founder of the Standard Oil Company, Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie who was an American industrialist who amassed a fortune in the steel industry and J.P. (John Pierpont) Morgan, one of the most powerful bankers of his time who financed railroads and helped organize U.S. Steel, General Electric and other major corporations. I am fascinated at how these men dominated their industries in their young country.

It got me thinking about what they all had in common and if there was any characteristic I could take from that to move my business forward. They were all focused, determined at all costs, to succeed. All of them captains of industry, they could see the bigger picture, they could envisage what ‘could be’ just round the corner.

J.P. Morgan’s father told him that he was to sever any ties with Thomas Edison and his ‘new electric light bulb’ invention. Morgan’s father, himself a very successful banker, just could not envisage the dream that his son could see. Fortunately for JP Morgan, due to his father’s untimely death, he was able to continue to finance Edison’s vision.

Look at the more modern titans of business today, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Donald Trump. They all share the same characteristics that those early titans did. Their ability to see the bigger picture and believe in what they are doing, regardless of mockery or well-intentioned advice that they are crazy, is shared over the decades of History.

In building your own business, who do you ask advice from? Who do you listen too? You need to hold on to your ‘vision’ and be careful who you take advice from. J.P. Morgan’s father had him reconciling accounts from a very young age, investing in companies as a teenager, however if he had listened to his father when he saw the vision of how the electric light bulb could light up the whole of America, I don’t think I would be talking about him as a success today.

We all need guidance and direction but think about it, would you take financial advice from a guy in dog-tired shoes who drives around in a 20 year old Ford, whose business card claims to give you “Financial freedom”??

To leave you with my own dream , I thought I’d share my photo of a hotel I found in New York last month… roll over Mr Trump, Tracy is coming though 😉